37 years later, friends get back picture they ruined
Tossed in the trash and presumably brought to a landfill for its final resting place in 1975, a piece of childhood came back to life for Charlie Picardi and Tony Guido at an Arlington Heights car dealership Wednesday.
Picardi of Lake Zurich recently stumbled upon what was believed to be the long-gone picture of a 1955 Ford Thunderbird, which the childhood buddies ruined with black paint when they were 9 years old and growing up in Bellwood. His discovery came last month when he journeyed into his old neighborhood and started talking to a man cutting grass.
Guido’s father had hung the picture in his garage and didn’t appreciate the boys’ handiwork on the white T-Bird set against a red background after he returned from work on that day in 1963.
Picardi said it’s as if the picture his brother restored to its original look returned home Wednesday when he gave it to Guido, who co-owns Arlington Heights Ford.
“It was a conversation piece,” said Guido, a Deer Park resident. “Always in the garage, because my dad was a handyman. He worked with his hands. He worked in a shop. That day when he saw (the picture) painted with a brush, he just wanted to come unglued.”
Guido said his father received the T-Bird picture — with the car slightly elevated from the canvas — as a gift from his brother-in-law in 1955. Guido said after his father’s death, his family moved from Bellwood in 1975 and he heard the home’s new owners removed the picture from a garage wall and placed it in the garbage.
Meanwhile, Picardi visits Bellwood for monthly meetings with Local 502 of the Operative Plasters’ and Cement Masons’ International Association. He went to the neighborhood where he lived from 1958 to 1976 after last month’s union session and wound up talking to a longtime resident who was mowing his front lawn.
After Picardi recalled how he grew up three blocks away and played in home’s garage, the man estimated to be in his late 70s asked if he wanted to take a look.
“So, I’m looking in the garage and I look on this wall and I see this picture on the wall,” Picardi said. “So when I’d seen the picture on the wall, I asked, ‘Where did you get this picture?’ He said, ‘My son dug it out of the garbage in 1975, when Anthony Guido’s family three blocks away moved away.’”
Picardi told the man that he and Guido painted the T-Bird picture black in the summer of 1963. Picardi said the man refused his offer of money and gave him the picture.
“When I’d seen it, a hundred million memories came into my mind of when we were kids,” he said.
His brother, Larry Picardi of Wood Dale, needed about a month to fix the frame and repaint the picture in its original white, red and black. It’ll be hung in a public area at Arlington Heights Ford.
“I can’t believe this picture is still around,” Picardi said.